Republicans Want Grad Students to Starve

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Over 20 years ago, I was one of many graduate students at a certain East Coast university who fought for the right to unionize.

Why would academics-in-training at a prestigious university need a union to protect their rights in the workplace?

Many courses at U.S. universities and colleges are taught by graduate students. In the early 1990s, we were paid less than a living wage to teach college courses, while conducting research and writing dissertations; graduate students with families were, as you may imagine, especially hard-pressed. We had actions, grade-ins, rallies and joined forces with the maintenance and clerical workers unions.

Last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) adopted new rules to make unionizing easier for private-college employees and to “[clear] the way for union elections at religious institutions such as Saint Xavier University and Duquesne University.” Such rules are necessary to prevent the exploitation of university employees, especially graduate student workers — teaching and research assistants — who are in a sort of “apprenticeship” status as they pursue masters and doctoral degrees under faculty advisors who they rely on heavily for their careers.

In particular, the Chronicle of Higher Education notes that the NLRB is reviewing a 2004 decision made prior to the unionization of graduate assistants at colleges and universities. It is also revisiting its standards about which faculty members at private colleges “should be classified as employees who can unionize and which should be classified as managers legally ineligible for union representation.”

The House’s Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training and the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions called for the hearing about graduate students and faculty unionizing. The NLRC is, the subcommittees claimed, “taking steps to impose changes on private postsecondary institutions by re-examining its jurisdiction over graduate students, university faculty, and religious institutions.”

But the hearing was really about Republicans objecting, yet again, to workers’ right to unionize.

College Teaching Isn’t What You Might Think It Is

Some professors only teach one or two classes all year, sit in book-lined and technologically-equipped offices, attend lectures by eminent colleagues, spend hours in quiet libraries or sparkling labs conducting research. But this is the Hollywood version of being a professor. Most of us juggle too many classes with demands to publish frequently in peer-reviewed journals, to advise a stream of students and take on administrative duties.

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94 comments

The GOP predator policies main goals are to empower the Vulture Corporations, the CEO Vampires, the Wall Street parasites to impoverish the 99%. Why is it the voters don't get it? RobMe/LyinRyan plans to gut the working families, they have said in so many words, " Students can go to hell, seniors can go to hell, workers can go to hell." Why doesn't the electorate get it?

Adjuncts get paid next to nothing because they want to teach because it is fun (at least at the college level), and most of them are very part time with another job to earn money to live on. Graduate students who teach get paid next to nothing because they are apprentices and need the experience teaching to qualify for a paid job teaching. K12 teachers get paid enough to live in modest comfort because it is difficult and discouraging to teach a very mixed bag of students many of whom would much rather be somewhere else doing something else than sitting in a classroom trying to learn whatever it is the teacher is trying to teach.

Republicans have NO intention of EVER cooperating with ANY Democrat in office. They are against women, children and the middle class. Why they have become so obstructive over the years I can only guess is that they want more money in their pockets and to hell with the rest of the nation. Vote Republicans out of office in every state and at every opportunity.

An excellent example happened at the RNC this year. The people who believe in the free market system used music that didn't belong to them. They are not about justice, freedom or democracy unless it's about benefiting themselves. Free market is wonderful if it means they make money but not if they have to pay. Welfare is a crime and detriment to society unless it's corporate welfare and they make money from it. Congress interfering with any business or industry is sacrilege unless it affects their profits.
Boil done the Republican rhetoric and it comes down to three simple little words. Pronouns. I, Me, Mine.
And these same people claim to be religious and fundamentalists. The sacrilege is glaring.